From the Tabloid Pages of the WaPo… The Stylist Speaks
by Pamela LeaveyWhen I first heard the story of John Edwards’ $400 haircut I was a bit taken a back. It’s a pricey haircut I thought to myself, but now the WaPo has a feature story on the Edwards’ hairgate and honestly, it’s a bit over the top. Reading the story, this jumped out for me:
At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail to meet his client, he began charging $300 to $500 for each cut, plus the cost of airfare and hotels when he had to travel outside California.
Torrenueva said one haircut during the 2004 presidential race cost $1,250 because he traveled to Atlanta and lost two days of work.
The bottom-line is time is money. If a stylist has to travel for a client, the client pays. It’s that way in any business and there’s no reason why this stylist wasn’t entitled to be compensated for lost business while he was traveling to cut Edwards’ hair. Is it an extravagance on Edwards’ part. Absolutely. But we’ve become an image conscious nation that spends as much time discussing how our politicians and candidates look as we do their stance on the issues. Perhaps if we spend a little less time discussing the trivial “looks” of our candidates and spent a little more time discussing their stance on the issues, we wouldn’t have B.S. headline stories like this one.
Torrenueva’s $175 a pop haircut’s for men in his salon, are not uncommon here in Hollywood, where the stars and the wanna be stars drop a lot of $$ to look good. Around this town the stylists can be as much the prima dona as the stars and evidently the politicians whose hair they style, as the WaPo piece tells with way too much meanlingless information.
But honestly, enough already with the hair. Didn’t the WaPo’s John Solomon have anything better to do with his time then chase down a prima dona Hollywood stylist for the scoop? Apparently not as Anonymous Liberal points out: “the article is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with mainstream political reporting.” I’m no fan of John Edwards but honestly this is not news worthy, it’s tabloid B.S. at it’s best.
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Campaign funds or personal? If Campaign, what other exepnditures does the Campaign make that the average contributor might not appreciate contributing to?
If Edwards thinks that a haircut might make a difference in an election outcome, I would like to see him defend that.
If this is common among candidates I think that voters would like to know. Some of us make sacrifices to find the money to contribute, and ought not to take kindly to seeing scarce resources squandered.
Not only is it newsworthy it needs to be trumpeted as loudly as possible!
I’ve heard solid progressives dismiss Edwards as a result on this one story…the ‘$400′ haircut.
I assumed something like this story was the reality. The fact that the reporter made sure and documented it is GOOD political reporting. The $400 Haircut story is the worst press Edwards has received.
Hopefully this will put it to rest.
Darrell
These days candidates all use the services of “fashion advisor” types. To some people image is everything and if a candidates image doesn’t click with people they will move along. Case in point, the media played the meme that Bush was a guy people wanted to “have a beer with.”
Stuart
Good points. Thank you.
We’ve gone from Nixon losing an election because of bad makeup to candidates who have to have their lucky hair person?
Again, bring it out. People will either love ot or hate, but at least they’ll know.
[...] to be a nonsensical side-note to the larger issues, but since I have written about Edwards haircut and Romney’s make-over, I might as well wade into this one. The big stir now is that An [...]